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And so the game began and continued for the next couple of hours. Margaret did most of the talking, telling her mother and Sarah all the gossip from the school, relating stories about her classes and her teachers. Becca thought that this was the best way to keep Sarah's mind off the topics that distressed her.

But it proved impossible to avoid mention of the Coppages' deaths. Margaret recounted all the theories and stories that had circulated that day at the high school inElba, among the students who were from Pine Cone; but most everybody had seemed to agree that it must have been the wiring, or oily rags in a closet or a can of spray paint that got overheated and exploded or a burner on the stove that Rachel had forgotten to turn off after supper, or any one of the other things that are well known to be home safety hazards. However, no one had any idea why none of the seven members of the family had escaped.

Sarah listened very attentively to all that Margaret had to say on the subject. And, at the end of it, when she and Margaret were playing out the last moves of the game - Becca having been eliminated about ten minutes before - Sarah said, 'Becca, you still got that wee-gee board I gave you for Christmas?'

Becca nodded hesitantly.

The first Christmas after they had become good friends, Sarah gave Becca a Ouija board. Sarah had been greatly disappointed with Becca's reaction to the present. She had looked both shocked and displeased when she opened the carefully wrapped package,

'You don't like it?' Sarah said to her friend. 'Or you've already got one?'

'No', said Becca. 'I don't have one ...' She spoke this very reluctantly.

Sarah was puzzled. 'Iknew you were interested in that kind of thing: ghosts and spirits, and talking to the dead, and all that.'

'Well', said Becca, 'I am. I believe in it. But I like to read about it. And that's all. But a wee-gee board is bad luck, it's real bad luck. It's only the bad spirits that answer the wee-gee board

'But you think it works?' said Sarah.

'Oh', said Becca. 'I know the thing works .I've seen it work a hundred times. But it calls down the bad spirits. They answer your question - perfectly innocent - like who you're going to be dating next year, and then they stay and they kill your dog. Or something worse.'

'I'm sorry that I gave it to you then', said Sarah quietly.

'Oh, hon!' cried Becca, 'you didn't know. You didn't know about the bad spirits, and I'm real thankful for it. I'm glad to have it, you know, in case of emergency, but I think I'm just gone keep it in the top of the closet, where it won't be no harm to anybody

'You could give it away', said Sarah. 'I wouldn't mind.'

'Ohhh, nooo!' exclaimed Becca, 'you can't give a wee-gee board away, because then the bad luck goes to somebody else, and it stays with you too. So then there's two people with bad luck. There's only two ways to get rid of a wee-gee board. One it has to be destroyed by accident, or two it has to get stole. And it can't be accidental on purpose either, like putting it in the backyard barbecue, pretending it's charcoal, or anything like that.'

But Becca hugged Sarah for the gift anyway, and now Sarah had thought of it again. 'What if it could tell us what really happened at the Coppages'? What really caused that fire to start?'

Becca looked shocked. 'We know what caused the fire! We don't need the wee-gee board for that!'

'What caused it?' Margaret demanded. 'How do you know, Mama?'

'I don't know exactly', Becca hedged, 'but it was one of them things that people talked about today. Oily rags or something. What else could it have been? There's nobody in Pine Cone that would want to burn up the whole Coppage family. It was a accident, and that's all. That's the important thing: that it was just a accident. We don't need the wee-gee board to tell us what we already know

It was evident to Sarah that her friend was genuinely afraid to employ the Ouija board, and because she was not sure that she really believed in it herself, she decided that she would not push the matter. But on the way home, across the moonlit patch of grass from Becca's back door to her own, she wondered what the planchette would have spelled out on the board.

Sarah noiselessly entered the house, and closed the door softly behind her, thinking that Dean and Jo were probably asleep by now; but she heard Jo's voice, loud and laughing, from the other end of the house.

She tiptoed softly through tlie darkened intervening rooms, ashamed of her own curiosity, and approached the open door of the bedroom. She stood in the shadows and tried to hear what Jo was saying, what the woman was telling her unresponsive son.

'... Wiring!' Sarah heard her fairly scream. 'Wiring! D'you hear what Sarah said they thought it was, Dean? They thought it was the wiring!'

Sarah entered the room suddenly, and Jo Howell's laughter ceased abruptly. The woman pouted, and would not greet her daughter-in-law.

Sarah glanced down at the figure on the bed; it was probably nothing more than the misleading shadows of the dim lights, but Sarah thought that the slit in the bandages was open a little wider, as if the faceless mask had been frozen in an inhuman laugh.

James and Thelma Shirley lived in the house in which the policeman had been born and raised. The couple slept in the room in which James had been conceived, and in which his mother had died fifteen years before. James's father had been killed in a collision with a Greyhound bus three months after that, and most people said it was suicide over the grief of having lost his wife.

That bedroom was not much changed. It contained the same bed and the same dresser, the same carpets on the floor, the same pictures on the wall. It was one of the few things that James Shirley had insisted on in his married life: that he and his wife Thelma should stay in that room and that it should remain as it was when his parents were alive. Though it was old-fashioned, a little faded and a little cramped, it was comfortable and possessed a great deal more character than the rest of the house, which contained new, cheaper furniture that Thelma had thought more stylish.

The night of the day on which Officer Shirley had talked to the insurance agents at the smouldering ruins of the Coppage house, he and his wife were talking as they prepared for bed. The only light in the room was from a small crystal lamp with a fringed shade that sat atop Thelma's dresser; the illumination was soft and flattering. Thelma sat at the dresser, on a wicker bench with a flowered cushion , and was putting up her hair with bobby pins and tissue paper.

The next day was Friday, Shirley's day off, and he planned to get up early, and go off hunting by himself. The quail season had just opened. He sat on the edge of the bed, in his pyjamas, lacing up a new pair of boots, purchased for the occasion. He was a large, loose, slow-moving man, with fair hair, light skin, and freckles on his neck.

Thelma spoke to her husband. 'Why you want to go hunting

when you know it's gone pour is a mystery to me.'

James craned his neck, and glanced out the windows. Low grey clouds had already blown up from the south, masking the moon. 'Quail don't care what the weather's like', he replied softly.

'Don't you never want to sleep late? Crack of dawn, and you're...' She stuck two bobby pins in her mouth, and didn't bother to finish the sentence. She glanced down at the lace runner that covered the shelf of the dresser. On it lay the necklace and amulet that Mary had brought that morning from the Coppage house. She pondered it a moment.

'James', she said.

'Hmmm?' He was still lacing his boots, and did not look up.

'James, you think I ought to keep this thing?'

'What thing, Thelma?'

T
his
thing, James.' She didn't touch it. 'This necklace Mary picked up this morning. She really find this thing at the Coppage

place?'

'That's what she says. I didn't see her pick it up. But I guess I hope she got it there, 'cause I '4 hate to think she was picking up things out of people's houses and pockets and purses.'

'Mary wouldn't do that. She must have found it at the Coppages'. So should I keep it?'

'Well', said the policeman, 'won't do the Coppages no good.'

'Must have belonged to Rachel, you think?' said Thelma, and moved the chain around with her bobby pin. 'She had fat ankles, you remember that, and she was always wearing short dresses, like she was showing 'em off.' Thelma had never cared much for Rachel Coppage, and it was strange now to have something that had belonged to her - the only thing, in fact, that was left of Rachel Coppage. Thelma continued to stare at the amulet. 'Didn't have any people of her own, nobody that ought to get this. Larry's people got money to throw down the well, and I'd hate to see them get it. They didn't like Rachel any more than I did. Won't nobody claim it. Probably nobody knows anything about it.'

James had set his boots down by the side of the bed, and noted with satisfaction that all the clothing he would need in the morning was set out so that he could dress as quickly as possible.

Now he turned himself under the white sheet and chenille bedspread that was almost too much protection in the warm Alabama weather. 'You bring me some water, Thelma? I don't want to wake up thirsty in the middle of the night.'

'You wait a minute, James. I want to see how this thing looks on me.'

Thelma didn't know why she was so hesitant about trying the amulet on; probably it was because it had belonged to a woman who had burned to death only the previous night. When Mary had handed it to her that morning, she had thought at first it might simply be a child's bauble, and during the activities that afternoon at the church, she had forgotten about it entirely. But now that she looked at it again, she saw that it had obviously belonged to Rachel Coppage, and not to one of the little girls. That morning, also, she had not seen a catch in the chain; she wondered if she would be able to pull the thing over her head.

But when she looked down at the amulet now, the chain was separated. She picked it up, and examined the ends of the length of gold; it still appeared that there was no catch at all, simply two unconnected links. This puzzled her, for she could not determine how it had got broken. Obviously a link had snapped and fallen away, leaving the chain in two pieces, but that didn't make real sense either because there still was no clasp or hook, and how were you supposed to get it over your head? Thelma was even a little relieved that now it was broken; she wouldn't "have to wear it. With that consolation she didn't feel so badly about the thing, and she lifted it up by the ends of the chain and held them around the back of her neck, spreading her elbows apart so that she could see how it looked on her in the mirror. She couldn't decide. It was a nice enough piece she supposed, and it just might be worth something - though likely as not it had been picked up at Loveman's in Montgomery, which she knew was where Rachel Coppage used to shop a lot - but Thelma wasn't sure that it became her.

Thelma was about to put it back down on the dresser, when she found that the chain had unaccountably attached itself at the back, and when she withdrew her hands, she felt the amulet drop heavily into place on her breast. She felt again for the catch but still found none. That was very strange, she told herself, and had to imagine that by the dim light on the dresser, she had somehow just not seen the catch - after all, it had to have been there. She shrugged, and then turned towards her husband.

'You like that, James?'

He opened his eyes wearily, and glanced at his wife. 'Don't go with a nightgown, Thelma.'

'Don't you talk to me like that', said Thelma peevishly, annoyed with her husband for being so obtuse, and probably as much annoyed with herself for having accepted this property which was not hers. 'I mean', she continued, 'how does it look on
me,
James? I'm not gone wear it to
bed
at
night,
James.'

James mumbled from the bed, 'Real good, Thelma, looks real good on you.' Sleepily, he turned over on his side, away from the light. But suddenly, he turned back over and said, with his eyes still closed, 'Thelma, will you get me that water? I'm not never gone get to sleep if I keep thinking about waking up thirsty in the middle of the night.'

'James', she said, not quite in reply, 'you think it'd be real tacky if I was to wear it to the funeral?'

James Shirley did not reply;
⁵
Thelma looked over at him, and saw that he was impatient to get to sleep. She sighed, and rose. 'I'm getting it now', she said, and passed out of the room.

Every night for the past ten years, James Shirley had asked his wife to fetch him a glass of water, so that he wouldn't wake up thirsty in the middle of the night. He never got it himself, and the fact was, that he never even thought of it until he had already got beneath the covers. At first Thelma had taken exception to this, complaining that he ought to get it himself before he had got into bed, but she had given this up because it did no good and she realised that he wasn't doing it on purpose to annoy her. And it had not bothered her again for years, really, before tonight.

Now she hated the man for it, despised him for this silly ritual, which she must suppose would be carried out every night for the rest of their lives. She thought:
If I were to drop dead tonight, he wouldn't last till Monday morning, because there wouldn't be anybody to get his water for him!